Recently, the Shanghai International MCN Conference and the School of Management of Fudan University jointly released the "China MCN Development Report (2024)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"). As the first standardized MCN industry guidance report on the market, the report discloses some interesting data. For example, it shows that the number of registered MCNs in China is close to 30,000, reaching the largest scale since 2015, and there are 243 MCNs with a total of more than 5 million fans. It is understood that these 243 MCNs only account for about 0.81% of the total, but the total number of their talent fans accounts for nearly 71% of the total fans in the market.
It is worth mentioning that the report also shows that although Taobao and JD.com have continuously increased their investment in content, especially live broadcast e-commerce, in recent years, the MCN occupancy rate of these two e-commerce platforms is still only 26% and 11% respectively. This may also explain to a certain extent why Taobao Live wanted to "do MCN" by itself at the beginning of this year, providing "nanny-style" fully managed operation services for celebrities and KOLs who are interested in entering Taobao to start broadcasting.
Compared with the dilemma of Taobao and JD.com, Xiaohongshu, whose user scale is far inferior to the former, has become the second most popular platform for MCNs, with an occupancy rate of 67%, second only to Douyin. And in addition to this "report", the relevant research data released by Crowley not long ago also shows that more than 80% of MCNs choose Xiaohongshu as a potential platform for future development.
With a large number of MCNs voting with their feet, Xiaohongshu has become a new "place to fight". In fact, this is not difficult to understand, after all, in the stock market, in order to solve the growth problem, the head MCN is also constantly expanding the business boundary, for example, the United States has recently made some attempts in the direction of building its own brand and going overseas.
On the other hand, in line with the simple wisdom of "not putting eggs in one basket", MCN will also take the initiative to jump out of the comfort zone, explore multi-platform layout, and seek more guarantees and increments. In the process of cross-platform operation, platform-related factors such as creator ecology, user characteristics, and operation mechanism will undoubtedly affect the choice of MCN to a large extent.
In the report, it is pointed out that in the current ranking of brands attaching importance to the commercial value of MCN, expanding popularity, establishing a distinctive brand image, and improving user favorability rank among the top three, while improving sales performance and increasing market share are ranked behind. As we all know, "planting grass" is the most unique content ecological advantage of Xiaohongshu, and it can even be said that it is this platform that carries forward the term "planting grass".
Starting from the end of 2023, Xiaohongshu has also launched tools such as the Data Alliance's "Grass Planting Data" and "Grass Planting Global Reach", realizing the integration of grass planting data on the platform and conversion data from other platforms. With data as the backing, merchants can also know how effective the grass planting on Xiaohongshu is, and how to adjust the grass planting content for users in a targeted manner, so that the grass planting can be based on evidence.
In such a situation, Xiaohongshu has naturally become a platform that many MCNs cannot avoid. Although the current user scale of Xiaohongshu has not yet reached the first echelon level, and it is far less than Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat, Taobao, Jingdong and other platforms, its user growth rate is very impressive. Previously, it was reported at the beginning of this year, citing relevant data, that the number of monthly active users of Xiaohongshu in 2023 has reached 312 million, a year-on-year increase of 20%, making it the large-scale online platform with the fastest growth of domestic users that year.
What's more, after years of hibernation, Xiaohongshu has finally begun to commercialize. Under the pressure of "making money to support the family", Xiaohongshu has opened up its data on the one hand, trying to change grass planting from "metaphysics" to "science", and on the other hand, it has also clarified the models of "buyer e-commerce" and "lifestyle e-commerce" for e-commerce business. In addition, in the local life service track that large factories have come to come, Xiaohongshu has also begun to try.
Of course, Xiaohongshu is not moving fast in commercialization now, but fortunately, it has already started. According to the relevant data previously released by Xiaohongshu, as of July this year, the scale of buyers on the platform was 6.7 times that of the beginning of last year, the number of users who placed orders in the buyer's live broadcast room was 9.8 times that of the beginning of last year, and the number of brands cooperating with buyers also reached 5.2 times that of the beginning of last year.
At the same time, the data released by Xiaohongshu also shows that 42% of new users will use the search function on the first day of coming to Xiaohongshu, and 70% of monthly active users have search behaviors, and search has become a daily habit of users. In the massive searches of Xiaohongshu users, as many as 88% are initiated by users. This series of numbers also proves that users are extremely likely to complete paid conversions through Xiaohongshu search.
You must know that for a long time before, Xiaohongshu focused on maintaining a good community atmosphere, and the founder Qu Fang has repeatedly emphasized "community". For the sake of maintaining the community atmosphere, Xiaohongshu has always been relatively cautious about its own commercialization, as well as the commercialization of businesses, talents, and MCNs in the ecosystem. In 2022, it even issued the Community Business Pact to proactively curb the "rapid growth" of commercialization in the community.
Now the active commercialization of Xiaohongshu is undoubtedly unblocking a group of MCNs. In addition, it is precisely because the commercialization of Xiaohongshu has just started and the pattern has not yet stabilized that MCNs have more opportunities to seize "turf". But with the influx of more and more MCNs, the problem faced by Xiaohongshu will change from how to attract MCNs to how to retain them.
[The picture in this article comes from the Internet]